Playing Games
by Lucillia
Summary: Back before he started at the Academy, Naruto had a group of friends that he used to play with under the cover of darkness.
1. The Mark

"Wh-Where did you get that dobe?" Sasuke asked, sounding unusually nervous as he stared at the marking on his shoulder that he'd had for nearly as long as he could remember.

Usually the odd tattoo was covered by either his t-shirt or his jacket but, he and Sasuke had been sharing a shower at Tazuna's house in order to save on hot water, since Kakashi-sensei and Sakura-chan took most of it before they could get their own showers in. He didn't know why Sakura-chan had reacted the way she did, and went all red and stuff when Kakashi-sensei had ordered them to share what was left of the hot water after their fight over it had nearly trashed Tazuna's house. He and Sasuke had shared the communal shower in the locker-room at the Academy before. It was basically the same thing here, but there were less people, and far less space to move around in.

"The people I used to play with when I was little gave it to me a long time ago." he replied.

"The people you used to play with?" Sasuke asked, eying the mark strangely.

"Back when I was little, there were a bunch of people I used to play games like Hide-and-Seek, Tag, and Ninja with. Sometimes we'd even run mazes, and the person who got to the center first got a prize." He replied, his mind wandering back to the time when he hadn't been lonely for a while.

Not that he was lonely now, with his team and Iruka-sensei mind you but, for a long stretch of years that had seemed like an eternity, he'd been so very alone, and it had hurt, especially after his friends had stopped playing with him. The Old Man was very busy and couldn't take too much time out of his schedule to see him, but he had tried, and continued to try. Without his team, Iruka-sensei, or the Old Man there for him, he had been alone for more than half of his life. He didn't remember the first time he was alone very clearly, other than having a sense of joy when his friends had started playing with him because he'd been alone before then. But, he remembered the intense pain of loneliness he'd experienced after his friends had left him very clearly.

The nervous look vanished from Sasuke's face as if it had never been there after he'd given his reply, and the usual dismissive one he gave just about everybody took its customary place as he finished dressing and left the bathroom.

Back before the Academy, he'd had a bunch of grown-up friends who had wanted him to play with them, unlike everyone else who had chased him off when he'd tried to join in on their fun. He had been four when they'd let him join their games. When it was time to play with his friends, he would wake up to find himself in a strange place where his friends helped him put on the things he would need to play that night's game, including a cat mask of his very own which had the most beautiful blue markings on it. The games they played together under the starry sky had been similar to the ones he'd seen the children who ran around the village play during the day but, they had also been different somehow. Maybe it had been because he was playing the games with adults rather than other kids.

After he was dressed in his play clothes, and his mask was on, he would be taken to where that night's game would be played. He would sometimes get tired as they traveled, and fall asleep on the way but, every time they reached their destination, he had been wide-awake and ready to play. At first, they had played out in the woods near the village. Later, they had started playing in places he'd never seen before, and hadn't seen since. When he was five, they had started running mazes as well as playing Tag, Hide-and-Seek, and Ninja.

The games of Tag had always been strange, and somewhat backwards. Rather than declaring someone "It" and running away from them, he was supposed to find a new person to join their game, and everyone would run after him or her when they arrived at the spot where the game was supposed to take place. He was supposed to pick the person who was going to join their game by finding the person who looked most like the picture his friends showed him before the game started. He was usually accurate at that part of the game but, once or twice he'd made a mistake and gotten yelled at by his friends because he'd ruined the game.

Hide-and-Seek had been pretty much the same as the game the kids played, except that you were supposed to surprise the guy from the opposite team if they got too close to where you were hiding. He didn't like that game as much, because his team's opponents would stop playing, and play dead instead after you surprised them. That, and there was always alot of that foul smelling sticky black stuff that got everywhere when they played that game. It always felt itchy and uncomfortable when it dried.

The sticky black stuff had also been there during the games of Ninja he'd played with his friends. The shuriken in those games of Ninja were heavier than the cardboard ones the village kids used, but much lighter than the ones used by the Academy. It was probably what threw his shuriken throwing off at the Academy, because he'd gotten too used to throwing them.

Running mazes had always been tricky. Rather than being like the ones in the puzzle books he'd seen Sakura-chan doing during her free time, the maze he was supposed to run through was always set up like a town, or a big house, or a fortress, and he had to get to the center and back out again without getting caught. Fortunately, his team was always there to help him win the game.

The games had all ended when he'd started at the Academy. His friends suddenly quit coming around to play with him, and every time he tried to get them to play, they would avoid him. They didn't look at him like the other villagers did but, he didn't like the looks they gave him, especially the looks Crow had given him the few times he'd run into him before he disappeared. With nobody to play with, he had gotten lonely, and had stepped up his pranks in order to stave off the boredom that constantly plagued him now that there was nobody to play with and no mazes to run. One day, one of his pranks caught the attention of a group of his former friends, and he had managed to lead them on a merry chase through the village. He then decided to do everything he could to get their attention so he could play with them again. It wasn't the same as it had been before but, it was better than nothing...

Sighing, he pulled his shirt over his head, and over the mark that had meant that he'd once belonged somewhere, and exited the bathroom so Tazuna's family who were just waking up could get their showers in.

As Naruto passed by the room he was staying in, Kakashi once more felt a pang of guilt as he was assaulted by the memory of a small boy clinging to Lynx's body and sobbing brokenly as he repeatedly tried and failed to wake him up. After Lynx had died in front of him, the child didn't eat or sleep for over a week until Itachi had...done something. Because they had shielded the small child from the consequences of his actions, he had thought it had all been a game up until that point when Lynx's demise had driven the reality of the situation home.

It was for the best that thanks to whatever Itachi had done, Naruto didn't properly remember his time in ANBU. It would probably drive the gentle and caring child who was on his team mad if he ever realized what he had already done in the service of Konoha. The Dark Side had been no place for a child. Itachi was living proof of that.


	2. The Night It All Began

Sarutobi Hiruzen felt sick as he signed the order. He'd done it mostly to keep Danzo from doing something...rash. Danzo had been criticizing his handling of Naruto practically since day one, saying that he was too soft-hearted to do what was necessary. This was necessary, but it didn't make it right. He already regretted the decision, but he hoped and prayed that he wouldn't be given further reason to do so, even as he knew he would.

There was no way in hell he would let Naruto become one of Danzo's little automatons who he'd been turning a blind eye to because they took missions for Konoha that would send even Hatake Kakashi straight to the nuthouse. There were times when one needed a force that one could plausibly deny should things go wrong, and Danzo, the Warhawk that he was, was the perfect leader for that force, the perfect fall-guy should things go south, especially considering the fact that the man's dearest wish seemed to be to sacrifice himself for the sake of Konoha like his father and his grandfather before him. It had been for that reason that he'd allowed the man a great deal of leeway in his dealings, quite possibly far too much leeway.

He would not let Danzo get his hands on Minato's son however, and not merely for sentimental reasons. Kushina had once confided to him how she and Mito before her had managed the Kyuubi which had been contained within them, and letting Danzo have Naruto would end in disaster. Naruto needed attachments, people he could hold onto, people he could care for and fight for. He would not find them in ROOT where attachments and feelings for that matter were discouraged.

He dearly wished that the boy could have simply been a child for a few more years. He was only four years old. He didn't deserve to have this happen to him so soon, he didn't deserve to go through this at such a young age. It would surely break him, and probably sooner rather than later. Most shinobi who had started out at an early age tended to break, Uchiha Madara who had first seen battle when he was five being a glaring example.

Doing this would keep Danzo off of his ass for a while however, and as long as Danzo was satisfied, he would leave Naruto alone, which would be a better thing in the long run. It wasn't as if the boy could have a normal life in the village anyway, especially considering the average citizen's views of the boy. At least that was what he told himself to assuage the guilt he had over what he was about to do to the boy he had viewed as a grandchild.

As soon as the paperwork was finished, he shoved aside the feeling of guilt that was gnawing at the pit of his stomach and called for someone who would be even less happy over what he was doing than he was. Someone who would follow his orders however, and who would do his utmost to keep the child alive.

&!&!&!&!&

Kakashi entered the small room in which the newest member of his team slept, in the two bedroom apartment in which he lived. His mind was whirling as he made his way towards his new teammate's bed. How would he explain what was going on to the child? He hadn't even been as young as the child was now when he'd blown through the Academy and set a record when he graduated at the age of five.

His father had started teaching him the Ninja Arts from the minute he could walk, because he didn't know how else to relate to him. He'd happily absorbed each of the lessons his father had given him in his limited free time. He hadn't learned the true realities of Ninja life until he went through his first and only Chunin Exam when he was six however. Until then...Until then, it hadn't been entirely real.

He'd become a ninja to be like his daddy back in the beginning. He'd been proud of passing all of those tests, happy to see the look of pride on his father's face as he brought home yet another perfect score, or had excelled enough in training that his Sensei mentioned it to his father. That pride had vanished after his father had died, and had been replaced by a determination to follow the rules and return honor to the Hatake family name. By then, he'd been firmly entrenched in the Shinobi lifestyle and didn't know anything else.

How could he tell explain to Naruto what was about to happen to him when he himself hadn't understood when he was that age?

Naruto had already been asleep when he'd arrived shortly after sunset, deciding to introduce the boy to his new life as soon as possible, which would be at the start of the night training that his team was going through. The child would have to learn to function in the dark sooner or later, and sooner would be much better than later.

He gently shook the small boy whom he hadn't seen since he was a small baby awake, and found himself looking into a pair of blue eyes that would have been Minato-sensei's, except for the fact that they held an innocence that he'd never seen in Minato-sensei's eyes. The boy stared at him silently for a full minute, the curiosity over who he was and why he was there evident in every line of his features. Features that looked a great deal like those of his mother with a detail or two which had belonged to his father thrown in.

"I need you to come with me Naruto." he said as he held out a hand for the boy to take, knowing he was damning his sensei's son to a life that would be as hard as or harder than his own as he did so.

"Are we going to go play?" the child asked, almost hopefully, having lived through yet another day alone aside from his caretaker who pretty much only interacted with him when it was time to feed him, dress him, bathe him, or put him to bed, and left him to his own devices for the rest of the day.

"...Yes Naruto." he said, feeling low as he lied to the small child who was now his team's responsibility, but unwilling to crush that small hope he'd seen in the boy's eyes just yet. "We're going to go play."

&!&!&!&!&

Naruto squirmed excitedly in the arms of the man who had picked him up and carried him into a building he'd never seen before. He was going to go play soon, and not by himself either. The stranger in the funny mask wanted to play with him!

He'd watched children play together when he wandered through the village before his caretaker found him and brought him home. He'd even some grown-ups play with children that looked like them as well. He hadn't been able to participate, and his caretaker had told him that nobody would want to play with him. That was a lie however, because the man who was carrying him into a strange room had told him that he wanted to play with him.

He couldn't wait.


	3. Registration

Kakashi sighed when he learned that the ANBU quartermaster didn't have any equipment in Naruto's size. He'd sorta figured that would be the case since, prior to Naruto's recruitment, or conscription rather, the youngest ANBU on record had been ten-and-a-half. Despite being something of a prodigy, the poor boy hadn't even lasted a year. Naruto, at four, was small enough to be mistaken for a two year-old. A fact that further underscored how wrong this situation was.

"We go play now?" Naruto's voice came from somewhere around his knees as they exited Supply.

"Not yet Naruto, there are a couple more tasks that need to be done before we can play." he replied to the small child who was beginning to become bored as he resolved to get Naruto's supplies through one of his more reputable contacts in the clans.

The Shinobi clans tended to start their young off with live weapons so there weren't any...accidents later on, like there often were with civilian born ninja who handled them like they did the blunted Academy weapons when they first got them, and found out the hard way why that wasn't a good idea. The clan suppliers would be a good place to get the child-sized supplies that Naruto would need, especially after he was trained. Naruto had to be trained because, according to the orders he'd received, Naruto would be taking part in missions as soon as he was deemed not to be a danger to the successful completion of said missions.

As soon as they left Supply, he had taken Naruto somewhere quiet where he could sit down and finish the boy's paperwork. Despite being the headquarters for Konoha's Black Ops specialists who were famed for their stealth, the place was amazingly loud. Probably because the people who worked, trained, and sometimes lived here had to be quiet just about everywhere else.

He'd filled out most of Naruto's paperwork beforehand, but there were a few things he had to ask the boy in order to finish the forms that were necessary for the completion of Naruto's registration in ANBU. As he'd half expected, the boy hadn't understood the questions, and he'd been forced to put "Unknown" in a few spots on his paperwork. As soon as the paperwork was complete, he helped Naruto stamp the form with a bloody thumbprint and an X, which was still considered a legitimate form of signature as, up until about a generation or so ago, there had been a number of excellent shinobi who just so happened to be illiterate. They'd mostly been phased out of the ranks after the last war ended, but one or two had hung on for a bit after the Kyuubi attack.

One of the things he would have to teach Naruto to do would be to read and write.

&!&!&!&!&

Naruto was bored. He was also feeling tired, and hoped they went to play soon, before he went to sleep. The man had told him that they would play, but he was beginning to think that he had lied to him. Instead of taking him to play, he had taken him somewhere boring. After sitting in a room that had practically nothing in it and being asked a bunch of questions that he didn't understand, the man who had told him that they would play stabbed his thumb and made it bleed. It hurt for a little bit before it closed up again like all of the other cuts and scrapes he got when he fell down, and when he thought that maybe the man would do worse, he made him draw something funny on the paper instead.

He wasn't sure if the man was mean or not. He'd hurt him once, but he'd apologized as well, and told them that they would go play after they got one more thing done. Hopefully the man was telling him the truth, and hopefully whatever it was that the man needed to do wouldn't take too long. If it turned out that the man was lying though, he would tell the Old Man next time he saw him. The Old Man was nice, and listened to him. The Old Man had gotten him a new caretaker after he'd told him that his old one was mean.

After the man handed the boring looking papers with the black scribbles on them over to another man in another room, he led him to a room with a table with a tray of brushes and inks and a chair. As the man led him to the chair and sat him down in it, another man entered the room and started fiddling with the brushes and inks.

"This will hurt for a little bit Naruto, but the pain will go away." the man said before taking off his shirt and crouching next to his side, holding his hand.

The man who had been fiddling with the brushes and inks, turned and looked at the man who was holding his hand.

"Has he taken his oath of service yet?" the man asked.

"I had him sign the form." the man who had told them they would play replied.

"I see." the man said, before kneeling in front of him.

"Naruto, do you promise to protect Konoha, and do what the Hokage tells you?" the man who had a serious look on his face asked.

He frowned. He wasn't sure he understood that question. The Old Man had told him that protecting Konoha was something that he'd do when he was a ninja when he told him about being a ninja after he'd fallen off of the roof, and the Old Man had told him not to climb on the roof until he started his ninja training. The Old Man was named Hokage. He liked the Old Man, so he would do what the Old Man told him to.

"Yes." he replied.

"Close enough." the man who had been playing with the brushes said before moving to the tray and picking up a knife he hadn't noticed, and a small bowl.

He frowned as he looked at the knife. This wasn't good. These people are mean, meaner than his old caretaker used to be, and they were going to hurt him. Before he could run away from them though, the man who promised to play with him held him down, and the man who had the brushes grabbed his hand and cut it with the knife, and put the blood in the bowl. The man then set the bowl on the table and bandaged his hand before turning around and putting his blood in the ink.

He struggled, trying to get away from the mean people before they could hurt him more, but the man who had said that they were going to go play continued to hold him down. The man who had cut him started painting on his arm with the ink that he'd put his blood in. It tickled at first, and then started to burn a little. He kept trying to escape, but the man who had lied to him and told him that they'd go play kept holding him down. Eventually, the man with the brushes was done painting, and after setting down the last brush, the man did a ninja hand thing, and the burn turned into very bad pain as what he painted on him flashed, and turned into a pretty swirl design.

"Why?" he asked the man who had lied to him when the man let him up, but grabbed his arm before he could run off.

Why did he lie to him? Why did he hurt him like that? Why did he pretend to be nice to him? Why?

"Because we all have to have them." the man said as he rolled up his short sleeve to show him a swirl thing like the one on his arm. "You're one of us now, so you have to have one too."

The man who had put the mark on him rolled up one of his sleeves as well, showing him a swirl mark that looked like the other man's and the one he'd painted on him.

"It's time to play now." the man who had promised to play with him but lied said, as he grabbed him and picked him up.

He didn't want to play with him now. He'd hurt him, and he had a feeling that the games he played wouldn't be nice.


	4. The First Day

Kakashi sighed as Naruto made yet another break for freedom on the way to the training grounds where his team had been waiting for hours. Getting his ANBU tattoo had spooked the boy, and made him disinclined to listen to him when he told him that he wasn't going to hurt him. A guilty part of himself said that the reason he wasn't going to hurt the child was because he was going to do something far worse to the boy.

Eventually, after a great deal of struggling on Naruto's part, he finally reached the training ground that he'd reserved for his team, doing his best to restrain the small kicking and screaming child who had gained him a great deal of unwanted attention on the way over. The whispers he'd heard behind him when people realized exactly which child he was carrying off disturbed him to no end. How could these people claim to appreciate Minato-sensei's sacrifice when they spat - sometimes literally - on the son he had left behind every time they saw him?

"What's with the kid?" Tenzo asked when he arrived, so used to his late arrivals that he didn't even bother pointing out the fact that he was late, like the rest of the team.

Up until now, Tenzo, who had previously been an experiment of Orochimaru's, had been the newest member of the team. That spot was now supplanted by the screaming toddler which he held in his arms. Based on the way everyone's posture was just the tiniest bit too stiff, Tenzo obviously wasn't the only one who was curious as to why Naruto was here, he was just the first to voice the question.

"Everyone, meet your new teammate." he said as he held up the screaming child for everyone to examine. "If you have any objections about Naruto being on the team, take them up with the Hokage because he's here on the Hokage's orders."

"What's wrong with him?" Lynx asked.

"I told him that we were going to play in order to get him to come in for registration. He quit cooperating with me when it was time to be marked." he replied.

"Why'd you tell him something like that?" Lynx asked as he cautiously approached him and the screaming child he was holding.

"Because I couldn't figure out how to tell a small child that they'd been drafted into ANBU without being consulted first, and he had asked if we were going to play." he replied, sighing as he set the boy on the ground, prepared to grab him the instant he ran off.

The boy quieted down quite a bit the instant he was set on the ground, probably shocked over the fact that he'd let go of him after spending nearly half an hour trying to hold onto him, and warily studied his new teammates. Currently, the team consisted of him, Tenzo, Lynx, and Boar with Naruto being the fifth wheel who would likely be keeping the team in the village indefinitely while they trained him.

"Why couldn't we?" Boar, who was a rather reserved Hyuuga who rarely spoke up unless he had to, asked.

"Why couldn't we what?" he asked, as Lynx carefully approached Naruto who looked prepared to flee at the slightest perceived threat.

"Why couldn't we play with him?" Boar asked. "There's no way a four year-old would be able to understand our training. If we turned it into a game however..."

And so they did, turning the night training into a game that had calmed the frightened boy down, and got him to relax around his new teammates. That had been the night that Naruto had connected with Lynx who had devised the rules for their "game".

&!&!&!&!&

Kakashi sighed as yelling brought him out of his memories of the past. Memories that were best forgotten by him as they had been for the most part by Naruto. Naruto and Sasuke were at it yet again. He didn't exactly know what their problem was, but the teamwork and whatever sense of camaraderie they had developed since they'd graduated the Academy had completely flown out the window in the month since the Wave mission, and he didn't know how to get it back.

Naruto had grown up to be an interesting child in the years since he had left ANBU for his own good and joined the regular ninja forces, attending the Academy after leaving ANBU in reverse of a normal ninja career. In many ways though, the boy was still the child who had run missions alongside him and his teammates, thinking them all a game. He'd proven it any number of times over the years when he had run several ANBU teams in circles around the village, and had managed to paint the Hokage monument in broad daylight, not getting caught until the vandalism had already begun, despite the fact that there were guards posted to prevent such things.

Naruto's training in ANBU had focused less on Chakra and Jutsu, and more on speed, and stealth, and observation, and a hundred other little things that one needed to survive a mission more than you needed fancy Jutsu. The boy seemed to subconsciously remember these things at times, though the conscious memories of them were gone, lost to whatever Itachi had done after he had taken Naruto home with him after that last mission, and Naruto had come back without any memory of the fact that Lynx had died, or any awareness of the lost time between Lynx's death and then.

Beneath the tree in which he was perched, Sakura had joined the fight, siding with Sasuke against Naruto, turning the row even louder as she yelled at Naruto and attacked him on Sasuke's behalf despite the fact that Sasuke didn't appreciate such gestures. Sighing, he once again went down there to break up the fight before the team destroyed the garden they were weeding. He could tell that his students were restless, because he felt the same. The team would not be going on anymore C Ranks until they could get over their differences however...


	5. Interesting Times

Kakashi cursed as he stared down at his broken leg. Technically, the thing was more shattered than broken, and would be needed to seen to by a surgeon if he wanted to walk properly again. He'd taken this mission because he hadn't learned his goddamn lesson the first time. His team had been hit with a double helping of the C Rank curse, and it was starting to look as if at least one of his subordinates had been born with the Interesting Times curse as well.

There was only a month left until the Chunin Exams which he'd planned on entering his precious students into so they could see where they actually stood, and he'd watched his students' over the last couple of months since things went completely FUBAR in Wave. If he hadn't decided to be proactive and do something about it, by the time the Chunin Exams came around, it was more than likely that they'd have ended up being more a trio of individuals who'd been forced together rather than an actual team, which would be worse than bad.

At first, he'd decided that due to the increased bickering amongst his students, another C Rank would be right out. As the arguments increased, he'd even started believing the cohesion they'd shown during the Wave mission had been a fluke. But then, he'd realized that the kids, having had their first taste of action before being once again forced to do what were basically glorified chores, were most likely going stir crazy being cooped up in Konoha. He knew he was. He himself hadn't spent so much time in the village as he had in recent months since he was a small child. In the end, he'd decided that another C Rank mission might be what the doctor ordered when it came to the team's lack of cohesion.

He'd thought another C Ranked mission might do the trick by either forcing things to come to a head, or by providing yet anther enemy for his team to band together against even if it was just him. Things hadn't worked out the way he had anticipated. Once again it had turned out that the enemy was stronger than expected, but this time it hadn't been due to dishonesty on the client's part. When the poor man had left his isolated village, there had only been a bit of a bandit problem which could have been sorted out by an experienced Genin team. By the time the man returned, the minor bandit problem had escalated into a war for territory between two rival bands which had rapidly escalated even further after a number of missing-nin had joined the fray.

How the missing-nin had gotten mixed up into the mess was one of those one in a million, unbelievable until it actually happens since it seems to be straight out of a bad novel sort of things. Apparently, one of the members of one of the bandit bands who had been injured in the first skirmish of the bandit gang war which had taken place in the local tavern when he'd been hit by a flying bottle had been the younger brother of a rogue Chunin who had been part of a band who had fled from Getsugakrue. On their way over to avenge the young bandit, the group of missing-nin had met and managed to piss off a band of missing-nin from Takigakure. The Taki nin had followed the Getsu nin, and ended up joining on the other side of the fight for what seemed to be the hell of it, because the group of bandits couldn't be paying them all that much.

Thanks to some spectacularly bad luck, his team had gotten caught in the middle of it, and he had been incapacitated before he could deal with the situation in any way. Before they could turn around and go home, which had been his choice this time since he'd nearly lost a student the last time they'd poked their nose in a surprise A-Rank, he had nearly lost his leg rescuing Sasuke from a trap that the boy hadn't noticed he was standing in the middle of until it was too late. Not that the dark haired boy appeared to be all that grateful for the assistance. Leaving had then of course became more problematic for the team when one of the missing-nin from the Taki group had registered their presence, and had persuaded his buddies to stop fighting for the bandits in order to hunt them down, probably just for the hell of it, but more likely for the Uchiha's resale value.

He'd sent out a message, and help would be on its way soon, but they had to hold out until it arrived. Doing so would be more difficult than usual with the condition he was in. There was only one real hope for his students left at the moment, and it was a rather slim one at best, and even thinking about doing it made him ill.

"Naruto?" he said, catching the attention of said student who had been nervously fidgeting with the blanket that was covering him to keep him warm in case he went into shock.

"Yes Kakashi-sensei?" the boy asked, his face drawn with worry.

"Do you still know how to play Hide-and-Seek?" he asked.

Nobody knew exactly what Itachi had done with the boy after Lynx's death to make him forget, but there were times that he was willing to swear that the boy remembered more of his days in ANBU than he let on. They had been careful not to overtrain the boy, because of the possibility of complications later in life, and because a few missions they had taken had hinged on the child passing himself off as a civilian child, but the boy had retained a number of the skills he'd picked up in his ANBU years, the stealth skills he had employed during his pranking career being the foremost of these.

"Which kind?" the boy asked curiously, as if wondering what this had to do with their admittedly dire situation.

"The kind you used to play with Wolf, Tiger, Boar, Crow, and the rest." he replied.

Rather than looking at him in incomprehension when he'd said those names, careful to leave Lynx's out of it in case Lynx's name turned out to be a trigger of some sort that would cause some sort of memory loss or a mental shutdown considering who had been messing with Naruto and what he did a year later, he'd seen recognition in the boy's eyes. Naruto remembered something at least, and hopefully it would be enough.

"...Yes." Naruto said after thinking about it for a while.

"Teach your teammates." he said. If the boy truly remembered the rules to the ANBU version of hide and seek, it would be his students' best hope for survival...

&!&!&!&

"So, how do we teach him to deal with an ambush?" Tiger asked as she watched Naruto leap from tree to tree like a little squirrel. The fact that the kid was doing that without Chakra made her slightly nervous, since there would be no sticking to something on the way down if the kid made a bad jump.

"Hide and seek, how else?" Lynx replied.

So far, presenting the training as some sort of a game had worked reasonably well. The boy didn't complain about the physical training he had to do nearly as much as many clan children did, since he had thought it was supposed to be fun, and it was to a degree since the team tried to make it so for the child who didn't really understand what was going on. They had recently started Naruto training on the child sized supplies that Kakashi had acquired from one of the clan suppliers by convincing Naruto that the shuriken training was part of a game of Ninja, and he seemed to be enjoying that training as well so far.

Naruto got on well with the other members of the team, and seemed to be most fond of Lynx who dealt with him the most aside from Kakashi who was team leader. The kid still gave Kakashi wary looks, but they had been coming less and less frequently.

"But, how...?" Tiger asked.

"I've got a few special training kunai back home that might help us check Naruto's accuracy." Boar said from where he was spotting for Naruto who was preparing to leap into another nearby tree.

"I meant how do we turn something that takes extensive preparation like an ambush into a game of hide and seek?" Tiger asked.

"Simple." Lynx replied. "All the kid really needs to know right now is We hide, They Find, and We Jump Out and Stab Them. The rest can wait until later."


	6. Hide and Seek

"What did Kakashi-sensei want Naruto?" Sakura asked when the boy returned from their teacher's side.

She had fearfully watched the sun set, and the sky grow dark, and worried about what was lurking out there in the night. Because they couldn't risk a fire, the darkness was all pervasive, and it frightened her. She had thought that she'd gotten over her childish fear of the dark years ago, but she was wrong. She flinched at every small sound she heard, and felt like screaming every time a shadow moved. There was no nightlight nor a blanket to hide under out here though.

"Kakashi-sensei wanted us to play the grown-up version of Hide and Seek." Naruto replied as he sat down next to her, looking out into the darkness beyond the cave they were hiding in as if he could actually see something aside from the vague outlines of the trees outside. It was a moonless night, which gave them a very small advantage due to the low visibility, but not enough of one, and they all knew it.

She wondered exactly what Kakashi was thinking, and if it was the pain medication he'd taken earlier talking. "Grown-up version of Hide and Seek" sounded vaguely perverted, which was fitting with the man's habit of reading porn in public when he thought he could get away with it, which was practically always. She was tempted to correct Naruto's behavior the way she usually did for even thinking of going along with their sensei's undoubtedly perverted suggestion, but they couldn't afford to make unnecessarily loud noises in the situation they were in, and Naruto always yelled when she hit him.

"How do you play the grown-up version of Hide and Seek?" Sasuke-kun asked before she could say anything.

"Well, first we hide close together, but not so close that we're right next to each other." Naruto replied.

"How close?" Sasuke-kun asked, looking as if he were considering something.

"Close enough that we can see each-other." Naruto replied.

"Then what?" Sasuke asked.

"We wait for the other team to find us." Naruto replied.

Sasuke-kun frowned slightly, and shook his head, muttering something about idiots who couldn't understand simple concepts.

A few minutes later, the three of them were hidden in the forest, within sight of the cave. Naruto was the farthest out, and she was the closest. Her heart pounded as she hid in the bushes, praying that the missing-nin didn't find her despite the fact that they undoubtedly would because they were far more skilled and experienced than she was. Kakashi-sensei had been their best hope because he was a Jounin, and more skilled than the missing-nin, but there'd been an accident, and he was unable to fight. All the team could do now, was wait and hope for help to arrive before it was too late.

Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the silhouette of one of the former Taki nin who were pursuing them silently approach the area in which her team was hiding. He was moving in on a vector that would bring him close to Naruto. Before she could call out a warning to her teammate, Naruto quietly leapt from his hiding spot and landed on the enemy ninja, expertly sliding his kunai across the man's throat.

"Point for me." Naruto said.

There was a playful grin on Naruto's face that was only just visible in the starlight as the man whose throat he'd just slit dropped to the ground gurgling as he bled to death.

All she could feel at the moment was shock, horror, and confusion. Everything Naruto had just done was completely at odds with the Naruto she knew, the Naruto who had cried at the death of their enemy whom he'd been unable to kill himself during the mission to Wave, the Naruto who had apologized to a rabbit for nearly scaring it to death. How could he just stand there and grin like that, like he'd won a prize or something?

She turned away as Naruto dragged the missing-nin's body into the bushes. Looking at Sasuke-kun whom she could barely see, she could see that he was just as shocked as she was. He obviously didn't know that Naruto, loud, stupid, Naruto was capable of this either.

By the time the sun rose, Naruto earned five more points.

&!&!&!&

Somehow, it just became tradition. The reason behind it in the beginning was probably because most of the missions they ran took place at night, so they started getting Naruto to sleep during the day while they traveled to their destinations because it was easier to carry him while he was asleep. By the time Naruto woke up at their destination, it was usually full dark. Eventually, nighttime became Naruto time. They took to training Naruto at night, playing with Naruto at night, and more exclusively taking Naruto on the missions that required the cover of darkness for their successful completion.

Part of the reason for this was because it was easier to hide the full horror of what was going on from the boy when he couldn't clearly see it. Things always seemed less real when they weren't staring you in the face.

When they'd realized exactly how innocent Naruto was, they had done as much as they could to preserve as much of that innocence as they could for as long as they could. They'd hid the death and the bodies from the child who had never known how many he had led to their doom with his innocent looks and charm. When death happened in front of the boy, or even on rarer occasions when Naruto had actually killed someone, they had told the child that the "other team" was playing dead, and had carried Naruto away from the body before he could examine it more closely and learn that his opponent hadn't been playing and wasn't playing now. They would then distract Naruto, usually with some sort of treat, until a member of the team dragged the body away to somewhere where the boy couldn't see it.

By the time Itachi, who had argued that they should teach Naruto the truth of what was going on before something that Naruto couldn't unsee happened, had joined the team, that was the way things had always been, and nobody had seen a reason to change them.

Nobody had seen a reason to change them until Lynx had died that was, and ironically, it had been Itachi who had been the one to end up hiding the truth from the child.


	7. Illumination

Darkness hides many things. Under the cover of darkness, either literal or metaphorical, one either stumbles around blindly trying to find their way, or one falls back into old habits, old mental routines, finding their way from here to there and back again the way a man can find the toilet in the middle of the night without once opening his eyes, never finding an obstacle in his path to jar him fully awake before he returns to his bed and slumbers until morning. The route Naruto had followed in the night as he played a game with his team that he hadn't played in years had been old, familiar, and had bypassed all rational thought. That night, for Naruto, once the game started, there was only the game.

Eventually, however, light must come and reveal to the world that which had been hidden in the darkness. Under the light of the rising sun, instincts faded into the background as the conscious mind regained dominion, and that which had been black under the light of the stars faded to rust, and crimson on green, brown, orange, and blue. Without anyone to carry him away from the worst of the mess and clean up anything that got on him and change his clothes into something more suitable for sleeping in, Naruto quickly found the source of the stench which he vaguely remembered having smelled somewhere more recent than the games he used to play when he was little.

"What happened?" he asked as he studied the sticky dried and drying blood that stained his clothes and coated his hands and weighed down the spikes of his hair, dying them a shade of crimson that made him more closely resemble his mother with an almost academic curiosity, as if he hadn't quite fully processed the fact that it was there.

"What happened? What happened? You're what happened!" a shivering Sasuke, who had been fighting flashbacks all night as he witnessed the blood pooling in the dark, and that smile, that horrible, playful, amused smile, yelled at the boy who didn't seem to be fully aware of what was going on.

Before Sasuke, or the shaken Sakura, who was beginning to wonder if anything about the Naruto she knew was real now that several glaring inconsistencies had been rather violently shoved in her face by last night's events, could say another word, the help they had spent the entire night waiting for as they had watched Naruto slaughter the missing-nin arrived. The group of masked ninja who had raced to their aid was led by a man that Sasuke was almost certain was a Hyuuga who had promptly zeroed in on Naruto.

"Looks like you've had quite the night, huh Kitten." the stern looking man said almost fondly, gesturing to the bloodstains that covered the front of Naruto's clothes.

At the word "Kitten" a word that had neither been signed nor spoken aloud in Naruto's presence by any of the members of his former team for years because they had wanted the still innocent Naruto who was unaware of the blood on his hands to forget and half hoped he'd forgotten, Naruto twitched before clutching his head.

"It was a game," Naruto muttered as he shook his head almost violently as if he were trying to clear it. "A game. Nobody got hurt. Everyone went home."

"What's he on about?" one of the Hyuuga's teammates asked as the Hyuuga moved towards the Uzumaki, reaching out, pulling back, and reaching out again as if he were almost afraid to touch the boy.

"It was a game, a game, a game." Naruto muttered as the Hyuuga who almost seemed frightened to do so wrapped his arms around the boy and pulled him close.

"Yes Kitten, it was a game, and the other team's gone to play elsewhere, and it's time for us to go home." the Hyuuga said quietly as he embraced the boy in a manner that was somewhere between a restraint hold and a hug.

"What's wrong with him?" one of the Hyuuga's teammates asked.

"Itachi did something to him after Lynx died. It seemed to fix him, but..." the Hyuuga replied verbally because his hands were too full to do any signing.

At the mention of Lynx and his demise, Naruto stiffened, and went completely still in the Hyuuga's arms. If the look in the boy's eyes was any indication however, the boy's mind was nowhere near as still as his body currently was.

&!&!&!&

Even one who is as graceful as a hunting cat, like Lynx, who had been nearing that point where it would be advisable to retire from ANBU and take less strenuous missions as a rank and file ninja, stumbles at least once in their life. Everyone is unlucky at least once in their life as well. Because Lynx's run of bad luck had come in the middle of battle, it was terminally so.

It had been so late at night that a more accurate word for what time it was would be "Early". The sun was already threatening to rise upon the section of South Lightning Country meadowland that had become an impromptu battlefield at the edge of which Naruto had been placed when it became obvious that the team had to stand and fight because they could no longer run. Throughout the night, the team had been forced to fight their way out of the country after their assassination mission they had been assigned had gone South in a rather spectacular manner when it turned out that the guards of the merchant they'd been payed to kill had been trained ninja rather than the standard soldiers for hire that they'd been led to expect. They had almost made it to the Frost Country border and to potential safety when a border patrol of Kumogakure ninja fell upon them.

It had been when they had their pursuers and the Border Patrol unit mostly subdued, and it was starting to look like they might all get out of there alive that Lynx tripped, and fell to the ground wounded by the shinobi he had been fighting against. The fighting grew even more furious after that as the team became driven to either come to Lynx's aid or avenge his death, and as the first rays of the morning sun crossed the horizon, the battle ended, and the team had been able to make their way to the side of their grievously wounded but still breathing comrade.

It soon became apparent that all efforts to save him would be in vain. Lynx's injuries were beyond the skills of the team Medic, and it was obvious that the man wouldn't survive long enough to reach help. There was only one thing left to do, and that was to make Lynx's passing as swift and painless as possible.

Everyone had been too busy trying to aid Lynx to pull Naruto away and distract him until the last moment. Crow, who had a younger brother Naruto's age, grabbed the small boy, pulled him close, and buried face in his shirt, not letting go until what had needed to be done was all over. As the exhausted team drew lots to see which of them would do the Katon Jutsu that was required to cremate Lynx since they couldn't store Lynx's body in a scroll on the off chance it could be intercepted, and they couldn't carry him home with them, Naruto tried to shake Lynx awake, growing even more desperate with each moment that passed without Lynx sitting up and fondly ruffling the boy's hair. By the time Naruto was pulled away from the body so it could be burned, he was crying and screaming for Lynx to wake up.

The boy's screams grew louder as he struggled to free himself and run to the fallen Lynx as Tenzo performed the Katon Jutsu, and Lynx's body burned.

It was on this scene that the sun fully rose, illuminating it with the harsh light of day.


	8. Full Circle

In the hours after Lynx's death and cremation, Naruto didn't stop screaming until someone finally hit him with a Genjutsu that put him to sleep. The boy started screaming and crying again the instant he awoke several hours later. Eventually, after being knocked out two more times, Naruto finally stopped screaming.

The team had already been in low spirits as they made their way back to Konoha thanks to the failure of their mission and the death of their teammate, Naruto's screaming, and later, inconsolable crying didn't help matters any. The fact that Naruto refused to eat, and wouldn't sleep unless someone knocked him out with drugs or or a Jutsu, just made matters worse. Because nerves were frayed and tempers were short, they had been less inclined to comfort the boy and try to make the child who had had death hidden from him for far too long understand than they should have, and the results of that decision rapidly made themselves known.

After they got home, no matter how many times they tried to coax the child to do so, the child still refused to either sleep or eat. The boy grew dangerously thin before their eyes. Any attempts made at force-feeding him only resulted in a mess as the child struggled in the grip of the one who tried to feed him and screamed like a banshee. Dark circles formed beneath the child's eyes as he continued to refuse to sleep. By the time the Hokage saw the boy and decided that it was best that the child retire from ANBU and possibly the ninja forces altogether considering his fragile state, the child was severely emaciated.

The team stuck by the child who continued to decline over the following days and weeks, hoping that he would miraculously improve, but knowing that they were awaiting the inevitable.

One day, as Naruto lay in the infirmary hooked up to an I.V. and a number of other machines that monitored his deteriorating condition, Crow made a hesitant suggestion. He thought that he might know something that would help the child, but it was a clan secret that he couldn't share with the team. Despite the fact that the the clan that the boy, who was at an age where most children would be graduating the Academy, belonged to was under suspicion, and the fact that half the team believed that the Uchiha had had something to do with the Kyuubi attack, the team decided to allow this. There was really no other hope at this point, as the Yamanaka weren't inclined to enter the boy's mind after Inoichi had run into the Kyuubi that one time, and nothing else that had been tried had worked. It wasn't as if whatever Crow had planned could do any further harm to the child considering.

After bundling the boy up and sneaking him out of the infirmary, they handed the child to Crow, and settled down to wait and hope.

&!&!&!&!&

Sakura had watched as Naruto was carried to Konoha by the leader of the ANBU team that had been sent to retrieve them after Kakashi-sensei had been injured and their mission had gone to Hell in a handbasket. Over the past two days they'd been traveling, Naruto had completely refused to eat, hadn't slept, and hadn't said a word to anyone. The pain-filled look in the boy's eyes worried her because it was so unlike the boy she had known for years.

Based on the ANBU team leader's body language and what little of Kakashi-sensei's expression she could see, and the covert glances and handsigns the two exchanged, this unprecedented change in Naruto's behaviour was both familiar and expected. She wondered why they would expect something like this, since she'd never seen Naruto behave this way before even when he was at his most depressed. She was also curious about where the ANBU team leader knew Naruto from, because Naruto had never before mentioned knowing any ANBU personally, and that was just the sort of thing the boy she knew would have bragged about back at the Academy.

All in all, exactly who Naruto was as well as what was going on with him was a mystery that she was unable to solve because she was missing so many pieces of the puzzle that it wasn't funny, and what she had been able to put together with the pieces she did have didn't make sense. Between the Academy and his placement on Team 7, there was no time for Naruto to have been in ANBU. And besides, the ANBU, who were the best of the best, didn't take Dead Last near dropouts.

She wouldn't have a chance to discuss this with anyone and get their opinions on the issue though, because Kakashi-sensei had made her swear to tell no-one about this mission. Apparently, something they had seen or done during the mission from Hell had been classified for a reason she couldn't fathom.

Sasuke warily watched his seemingly near-catatonic teammate who had greater depths to him than he'd previously suspected as they made their way back to Konoha. When it came to the other boy who frequently antagonized him, he'd been looking at the near-blinding surface for so long that he had pretty much forgotten that there might be something underneath that surface. The clues that there were more to the idiot who had made it his mission in life to bother him had all been there, but he had not associated the disparate incidents and pieced them together. Now that he began to do so, the picture that formed was rather disturbing.

The thought that That Man had done something to the boy that had made him the way he was now had disturbed him greatly. And, it was clearly Itachi who had done it, whatever it was, considering the number of comments Kakashi made about Naruto's similarity to someone called Obito who was presumably the Hatake's former teammate Uchiha Obito. But, there was another thought that disturbed him even more greatly, and that was "Was there something about ANBU that drove the people in it insane?".

The fact that there was evidence to support this supposition was frightening. Both That Man and the Dead Last had served in ANBU and, both of them ended up suffering serious mental problems. It had only been after joining ANBU that That Man had begun acting strangely and pulling away from him. It had been after making Team Captain at what he'd heard was an insanely young age that That Man had suffered some sort of psychotic break and slaughtered the entire clan except for him. When it came from the Dead Last who would be so easy to overlook if he weren't constantly clamoring for attention, well, the fact that he had problems was patently obvious, especially now.

When they finally got back to Konoha and Naruto holed himself up in his apartment, not leaving for anything, not even missions or training, Sasuke and Sakura were almost relieved because it solved the problem of what to do with the teammate that they both found themselves to be frightened of for different reasons and didn't know how to deal with. Kakashi, who found himself watching almost helplessly as his exhausted student dropped weight at an alarming rate and glared at him distrustfully each time he approached to try to get him to eat or sleep, on the other hand wasn't. He was worried that Naruto wouldn't pull out of his current state, and that things would go the way they had the last time, or worse, considering the fact that Uchiha Itachi wasn't there to bring about a miracle.

It had been out of the desperation he had been feeling that he had taken the advice of the man whom he couldn't remember aside from the impression he had of the sound of a tinkling bell and brought Naruto to an isolated section of the forest and left him there alone. There could be no other explanation for why he had done something so potentially foolish, something that could place Naruto at such great risk of being captured by Konoha's enemies while he was in his weakened state.


	9. Return

When they saw the happy smile that the still weak Uzumaki child had greeted them with the day Crow had returned him, they decided that it would probably be best not to question the miracle that had brought it about. The fact that he was eating and sleeping now was a blessing.

It soon became obvious to them however that despite the fact that Naruto was happy around them and liked being in their presence, he didn't properly remember them. Further questioning had also revealed that he didn't properly remember his time in ANBU either. Seeing the child like this and knowing that he didn't really remember being a part of the team hurt almost as badly as seeing him lying on the infirmary bed had.

For the first few months after Naruto left ANBU there had been no shortage of people to tuck the boy in at night, as the child got used to his new civilian life that he'd never realized he'd left which had included an apartment of his very own that had been outright bought and paid for with his mission pay, and started out in his studies at the Academy which the Hokage had decided to allow him to attend in order to properly fold him into the regular ninja forces after a month's observation had shown that he wasn't about to suffer a relapse any time soon. And, if cooked food miraculously appeared on Naruto's table at mealtimes during those months that the boy was learning how to care for himself, nobody said anything. Eventually though, the visits tapered off as Naruto showed no signs of actual recognition. Though it almost seemed to be callous to say it, most of the team started to be of the opinion that Naruto had died back in Lightning Country alongside Lynx. The Academy student in the small civilian apartment who wore Kitten's face almost seemed to be what was left after someone was mindwiped and had their personality replaced in preparation for becoming a sleeper agent.

The thing with sleeper agents though is that the cover personality they were given eventually broke. Though it hurt to not have the child remember them, having the child this way was far better than watching him shatter again and return to the way he had been before Crow had taken him away and returned some semblance of life to him.

Despite the fact that they stopped visiting, Naruto didn't stop seeking out their company. Unlike a normal first, and later second, third, fourth, and final, year Academy student, Naruto was able to spot them wherever they concealed themselves and approach them when he wanted to. After finding them, the boy did everything he could think of to gain their attention and get them to leave their posts in order to play with him. Nothing worked.

Nothing worked until the boy had found a prank that they could not ignore, and they had been forced to chase the child who had proven that his skills hadn't dipped too sharply since his departure from ANBU as he led them around the village, laughing merrily the entire time. Having been encouraged by the prank, the boy stepped up his game, and his pranks grew even more elaborate, and the chases lasted longer and longer as time passed. Even though the boy would eventually get the message if they stopped reacting to his pranks, they found that they couldn't deny the child this bit of fun. The boy had been growing increasingly depressed the longer he had been denied their company.

Eventually, things came full circle in a way, and, much like when he started in ANBU, when Naruto was re-inducted into the Ninja forces, Hatake Kakashi became his team leader.

&!&!&!&!&

Kakashi smiled when he watched Naruto arrive at Training Ground 7, looking like his usual happy self. There was no sign of the mental anguish he had suffered over the last two weeks. In fact, there seemed to be an extra bounce in the boy's step and sparkle in the boy's eye, much the way he had been before he'd graduated the Academy. He swore then and there that he would do anything it took to make sure that Naruto never returned to the state he'd been in a few days earlier, the state he'd been in nearly six years ago. Anything.

Sakura stared at Naruto in confusion. Two weeks after the mission from Hell, Naruto, who had vanished from his apartment three days before if what Sasuke had said was to be believed, had abruptly turned up at team training looking and acting the way he used to before the mission that had made her question all she knew about the boy. There was absolutely no sign of the sadness and the horror she had seen two weeks earlier, and aside from his almost painful thinness which was covered by his overlarge tracksuit, Naruto seemed almost perfectly normal.

People didn't just bounce back in a matter of days like that. Especially not people who had been in the state Naruto had been in for the last couple of weeks after he'd gone nuts during that game of "Hide and Seek" he'd been playing during the mission while the missing-nin had been hunting them.

She opened her mouth to ask the boy a question about just what in the hell was going on. Before she could get a word out however, Kakashi's gloved hand covered her mouth.

"Not a word." Kakashi-sensei whispered in her ear in a tone of voice that chilled her blood. "Not one word. If I find that you've been talking to Naruto about things best left forgotten, things will become decidedly...unpleasant for you."

Sasuke frowned as he watched the Uzumaki's antics. He had visited the boy's apartment building a number of times before and after missions and training, watching him, and waiting to see if he would finally snap and show his true colors the way That Man had done, and therefore had been fully aware of the boy's abrupt departure. Considering the fact that for more than a week before then, the boy had been content to remain in his apartment starving himself to death, that departure had not been voluntary on the Dead Last's part.

The end result of that departure was...this.

He didn't know what this was, but he knew full well that the hyperactive loudmouth who was bouncing around like an over-energetic Terrier had not been cured of his problems. Not in three days.

There was something seriously wrong with the Uzumaki boy, and he would have to do something about it. Considering the fact that the Hokage was more than likely in on it considering how much attention he paid to the clanless orphan, he didn't know exactly what he would do, but his first order of business would be to get a Yamanaka to find the full extent of the damage the Uzumaki suffered. Ino had a crush on him, and therefore would be willing to do just about anything for him. He would be able to use that.

Not wanting to be around the boy who was bringing back unpleasant memories of That Man before the end any longer, he decided to go and find the Yamanaka as soon as he could so they could fix this before the Dead Last snapped and went on a killing spree.

"Just where do you think you're going?" Kakashi asked, coming up behind him as he made his way away from the training ground which contained the dangerous idiot who probably wasn't actually an idiot.


	10. End: In Contrast

There are times when Sakura thinks that the second C Rank mission her team went on was all a bad dream, especially since it was never listed amongst the missions that she and her team have taken, but then Naruto says or does something that reminds her, and she shudders. She's kept her promise to Kakashi though, and never said a word to her friend.

Naruto has proven more times than she could count that he was a loyal friend who would stick by her side through thick and thin. She tries to be just as good a friend to the loud, cheerful, and slightly dense blond, but sometimes falls short of the mark.

Sometimes though, she'll wake up in the middle of the night, and she'll remember. She'll remember, and wonder if she'd ever really known Naruto.

Sasuke, Sasuke however, he never really understands the unease he has felt around Naruto since shortly before the Chunin Exams. Every time he encounters Naruto, which was admittedly not that often after his defection, the feeling that he's forgotten something about the boy, something important, something he must remember before it is too late desperately claws through him.

He has absolutely no idea what he could be forgetting about the blond loudmouth who constantly threatens to surpass him, and who, for a short time, had once been his friend though.

As for Naruto, if he faced a little more than "Dark Naruto" when he had been forced to face his true self and see himself for who he was and who he wanted to be before he'd rushed off to the battlefield to face Madara a little wiser and a little more in control of both himself and the Kyuubi than he used to be, he never said. Either way, there was no third total breakdown for him when the smoke cleared and he was forced to face the enormity of what he had faced and his own actions as he faced it.


End file.
